Abstract.A tool for conceptual design is introduced which transforms requirement specifications in natural language into concepts of the EER model. The transformation is based on the assumption that the meaning of data modeling concepts can be derived from structures of natural language. A parsing algorithm which accesses information of a grammar and a lexicon is designed to meet the requirements of the tool. The parsing results are processed further on by rules and heuristics which set up a relationship between linguistic and design knowledge. The design tool works interactively to handle information which is ambigous, incomplete or redundant. IntroductionPotential users of information systems usually express their system requirements in natural language. It is the task of the designer to understand the terminology and therefore the exact nature of data in the application environment. The abstraction and transformation of the requirement specifications results in a first proposal of a data model which expresses the most important concepts and relationships. This data model is the basis for further communication with the users and for iterative refinement.This paper describes a rule based design tool, the so called Data Model Generator DMG, which supports the conceptual design of a data base. Information requirements of the user expressed in natural language form the input of the system. The proposed tool aims to support the designer in extracting knowledge from these requirement specifications. The rules of the DMG are based on the assumption that syntactic structures of language can be translated into data modeling concepts. Consequently, the rules represent language as well as data modeling knowledge. We have chosen German as input language and the extended ER (EER) model as a data model [5] [21]. It is very possible that the proposed design tool can be adapted to other languages e.g. English. Chen [10] has pointed out that the basic constructs of English sentences can be mapped into ER schemas in a natural way. Human failures are reduced, ambiguities of language and incomplete information may be detected very early in the design process. For this reason interaction with the user is initiated if the DMG is not able to perform the design automatically.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes other existing methodologies and tools which analyze natural language requirements as input for conceptual design. Section 3 offers a survey of the architecture of the DMG by

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The Gulf Cooperation Council, founded in 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, does not focus on economic, political or military cooperation. Instead, the GCC was established as a symbolic organisation of unity against the ideational threat from antimonarchical Iranian and Iraqi ideologies. The Arab uprisings pose a new dire ideational threat: popular protests toppling authoritarian leaders. As I analyse in three case studies, the GCC does not reflect a united stance amongst its members and has become a symbol of discord.

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